Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology. The items were found 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high in the Andes Mountains. Other artifacts found along with the textiles had been dated to 12,000 ago and even older. However, the textiles themselves had never been dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College (PA) who led this...

Murder suspect Joran van der Sloot has stabbed at least three other inmates during his incarceration at a Peruvian prison, a magazine reports. The Peruvian magazine Panorama alleges that van der Sloot stabbed three prisoners, with at least one victim needing emergency medical care. The magazine also reports that the Dutchman is a heavy drug user who has "been put into solitary confinement several times but comes out even more angry," a source told Panorama. ..................................... The Dutch native's lawyer, Maximo Altez, has not publicly addressed the latest allegations. Panorama reported that he has not denied his client was involved.

The body of a young woman was found in Joran van der Sloot's Lima hotel room five years to the day of Natalee Holloway's disappearance on a school trip to Aruba. Prosecutors in Peru say van der Sloot has admitted killing Stephany Flores after she found material on his laptop relating to Natalee. Peruvian prosecutors say Joran van der Sloot killed Stephany Flores in cold blood and want an extra long sentence. The Dutchman's lawyer says it was a spontaneous, emotional act and his client should face no more than three to five years. Van der Sloot's Peruvian lawyer, Max...

The late Sen. Ted Kennedy arranged to "rent" a brothel for a night while on a visit to Chile and other Latin American countries decades ago, according to a 1961 State Department memo obtained and published by the watchdog group Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch released several documents said to be from Kennedy's FBI file. The group said it obtained a cleaner copy of the State Department memo after a mostly redacted version was made public earlier. The Dec. 28, 1961, memo described a tour of several Latin American countries Kennedy made while he was an assistant prosecutor with Suffolk County,...

A British team of archaeologists on expedition in the Peruvian Andes has hailed as "sensational" the discovery of some of the most sacred objects in the Inca civilisation -- three "ancestor stones", which were once believed to form a precious link between the heavens and the underworld... Dr Frank Meddens, research associate of Royal Holloway, who was also on the expedition, said they had "danced a little jig on top of the mountain" after discovering the objects that they had only read about in 16th-century Spanish documents.

Recent finds at the Ventarrón archaeological site have revealed some of the oldest examples of ancient Peruvian domestication of animals. The Ventarrón site, belonging to one of the oldest civilizations in the Americas, has already given up a number of amazing discoveries. This latest gives us a look at early animal domestication. A much more recent Moche (1500yrs ago) ceramic of a local puma Work at the site, under the leadership of Ignacio Alva, son of famous Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, has revealed a huge collection of animal bones, mostly felines from the Peruvian Amazon on the other side of...

Recent finds at the Ventarrón archaeological site have revealed some of the oldest examples of ancient Peruvian domestication of animals. The Ventarrón site, belonging to one of the oldest civilizations in the Americas, has already given up a number of amazing discoveries. This latest gives us a look at early animal domestication. Work at the site, under the leadership of Ignacio Alva, son of famous Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, has revealed a huge collection of animal bones, mostly felines from the Peruvian Amazon on the other side of the Andes mountains. With such a large number of bones, the archaeologists...

Peru (MNN) â€• Nine years after the Peruvian air force mistook a missionary flight for a drug run, the Central Intelligence Agency took responsibility for its part in the shoot-down of a plane which killed a missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her infant daughter, Charity.(Photo by Joe Sherman)

A large tomb dating from ancient Inca times was found in the southern sector of Pueblo Alto of Kuelap fortress, located in the department of Amazonas, director of restoration and conservation Alfredo Narvaez announced. He told Andina that in the vicinity of the tomb, of which excavation ended on Monday, fine ceramic offerings from the Tahuantinsuyo (Inca Empire) were also found, which apparently were taken there from Cusco. "This tomb has an unusual dimension and was sealed by a thick stuffing. As we were cleaning, we run into materials that we had never found before in other structures of...

Lima, Peru: Peruvian archaeologists have unearthed four perfectly preserved mummies at an ancient burial site in the capital city, Lima. The mummies are more than 1000 years old and were found at the Huaca Pucllana - a pre Inca temple.

Ukraine and Peru Begin Tank Testing (Source: Forecast International; issued October 15, 2010) NEWTOWN, Conn. --- Ukraine and Peru have begun testing the new Tifon-2 tank. The Tifon-2 is a joint venture of the Morozov Machinery Design Bureau in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Casanave (DISCA) in Peru. Based on the T-55 and T-55ATM tanks, the Tifon-2 is powered by a 1,050-hp 5TDFMA engine and has a top speed of 55 km/h. It will be armed with a 125mm KBM-1M with an automatic loader and come equipped with a computerized fire control system. Trials began earlier this month and included mobility, speed,...

WASHINGTON—A few days ago, I received an early-morning phone call from my father, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa: “The secretary of the Swedish Academy has just told me that I have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2010. They will announce it in nine minutes.” I shared my joy with him and thanked him for liberating me from a question with which I have been pestered for a couple of decades—“Why did your father not receive the Nobel Prize this year?” Then I thought how different Latin America would be by now if its political economy had resembled his...

According to an Italian scientist, a huge network of earthworks, or geoglyphs, is visible in satellite imagery of a large area, over 463 square miles, in the surroundings of the Titicaca Lake, Peru. Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, professor at Italy’s Politecnico di Torino, claims the patterns she discovered while studying satellite pictures near the Titicaca Lake. She says the shapes are the result of an almost unimaginable agricultural effort of Andean communities centuries ago. “People created a system of terraced hills and raised fields, which were large elevated planting platforms, with the corresponding drainage canals, to improve soil, temperature and moisture...

Only ever seen by a few people over the past century, the Inca site of Inkaraqay located on an inaccessible and nearly vertical side of the Huayna Picchu mountain that overlooks Machu Picchu, is only now being revealed to the wider world. With the appearance of a fort hanging on to the sheer drop that gives way to the Vilcanota river and the well-known moon temple below, its huge walls and terraces covering 4,500 square metres are actually agricultural in nature.

Using infrared aerial photography to penetrate the forest canopy, the team led by Briton Hugh Thomson and American Gary Zeigler located the ruins at Llactapata 50 miles northwest of the ancient Incan capital, Cusco... The site was first mentioned by explorer Hiram Bingham, the discoverer of Machu Picchu, in 1912. But he was very vague about its location, and the ruins have lain undisturbed ever since. After locating the city from the air, the expedition used machetes to hack through the jungle to reach it, 9,000 feet up the side of a mountain. They found stone buildings including a solar...

Thieves have tried to blackmail a Peruvian small-town mayor into withdrawing his re-election bid by claiming to have stolen his late father's skull, police say. The thieves dug up the body of Rogelio Vizcarra's father and then sent him a text message. Mr Vizcarra, mayor of San Cristobal in southern Peru, says the message sender offered to return the skull if he withdrew his bid for re-election. But he says he still plans to run. Police in the small town near Moquegua say the grave robbers unearthed the remains of Juan Vizcarra, who died in 1978, removing the skull and...

...the most ancient in the country and identifies them with the Bracamoros culture, the daily El Comercio said on Saturday. On both sites were found 14 burial vaults that typically contain the skeletons of newborns and adolescents placed there as offerings at different times in the course of the 800 years these buildings were in use, the newspaper said. The Bracamoros culture occupied part of the current Ecuadorian province of Zamora Chinchipe and the Peruvian regions of Amazonas and Cajamarca, where the temples were found, the daily said. It said that the place where the archaeological remains were uncovered was...

The mother of missing teenager Natalee Holloway sneaked into the Peruvian prison where suspect Joran van der Sloot is being held and confronted him about fate of her daughter, according to local news reports. Beth Holloway-Twitty arrived at Castro Castro Prison with a Dutch journalist, Peter de Vries, who is investigating her daughter's disappearance for Dutch television, the Peruvian news program 24 HORAS reported. Holloway-Twitty was reportedly able to speak to Van der Sloot for five minutes Wednesday before she was removed by the authorities because she did not have permission to talk to him.

In this Peruvian Times tour of early Peru we are now visiting the fourth site, Pucllana or the Huaca Juliana, part of the "intermediate" Lima Culture. Please see Part 2 for map and Part 3 for aerial views and context. I hope that during the course of the next five parts of the series -- which all have to do with the same time period as Pucllana, approximately 200-800 AD -- a more intimate understanding of this remarkable era in Peru's development will emerge. It is remarkable also because of the "flowering" of two neighboring cultures: those of the Moche...

...The early 17th-century author had translated Spanish numbers -- uno, dos, tres -- and Arabic numerals into a mysterious language never seen by modern scholars... ...said project leader Jeffrey Quilter... The newfound native language may have borrowed from Quechua, a language still spoken by indigenous peoples of Peru... But it was clearly a unique tongue, and likely one of two known only by the mention of their names in contemporary texts: Quingnam and Pescadora -- "language of the fishers." Some scholars suggest the two are in fact the same tongue that had been misidentified as distinct languages by early Spanish...

New York Times ^ | Saturday, August 21, 2010 | Simon Romero, with contribs by Andrea Zarate

Archaeologists say the Incas, brought down by the Spanish conquest, used khipus -- strands of cords made from the hair of animals such as llamas or alpacas -- as an alternative to writing... San Cristóbal de Rapaz, a village 13,000 feet above sea level... isolation has allowed it to guard an enduring archaeological mystery: a collection of khipus, the cryptic woven knots that may explain how the Incas -- in contrast to contemporaries in the Ottoman Empire and China's Ming dynasty -- ruled a vast, administratively complex empire without a written language. Archaeologists say the Incas, brought down by the...

LIMA, Peru – An American activist convicted of aiding leftist rebels surrendered to police on Wednesday after a court struck down a decision granting her parole and ordered her to return to prison, where she is to remain with her 15-month-old son for the time being...

Peru is set to overtake Colombia as the world's top producer of coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine. Peru's production has nearly doubled in the last decade, according to UN data. This year, it grew by about a 6.8 per cent, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says. Curbing this figure will depend on the government's policies. Al Jazeera's Craig Mauro reports from Piura town in Peru.

More than 500 other people in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon region, close to the border with Ecuador - all of them Awajun Indians - have been bitten by the blood-sucking bats. Rabies outbreaks - particularly among bats - are a regular occurrence in Peru.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru's health minister says an outbreak of plague has killed a 14-year-old boy and infected at least 31 people in a northern coastal province. Health Minister Oscar Ugarte says authorities are screening sugar and fish meal exports from Ascope province, which is south of the city of Trujillo and home of the popular Chicama beach.

LIMA (Reuters) – An ancient ceremonial ground used by a Pre-Columbian civilization for human sacrifices has been uncovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists said on Thursday. The discovery appears to reinforce prevailing theories about a ceremony known as "the presentation" that was carried out by the Moche people, an agricultural civilization that flourished between 100 B.C. and 800 A.D. Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Bruning Museum in Peru and a leader of the dig, said the ceremonial site likely hosted ritual killings of prisoners of war. Photographs taken at the site show more than half a dozen skeletons...

...It's one of the more tantalizing mysteries to emerge from the spy saga that has entranced the world over the past 12 days: Could a wife be in the dark even as to her husband's very name? And the broader question: Was Vicky Pelaez, deported Thursday in a spy swap along with her husband, an enthusiastic secret agent — who like him, was willing to put her loyalty to Moscow over that of her children? Or was she a wife betrayed?... (Waldo Mariscal) ... said he didn't know where he and his brother would end up living, though he said...

Joran van der Sloot has sued the lawyer who represented him during a police interrogation on the day that authorities say the Dutchman confessed to killing a Peruvian woman, his current attorney said Saturday. Maximo Altez told The Associated Press he filed suit Friday charging attorney Luz Romero Chinchay with misrepresentation, abuse of authority and conspiracy to commit a crime. Altez said the initial lawyer "pretended to be a public advocate when she is actually a private attorney."

<p>WASHINGTON — Ten Russian intelligence officers have been arrested for allegedly serving as illegal agents of the Russian government in the United States, the Justice Department announced Monday.</p>

LICAPA, Peru (AFP) – In a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes, men in paint-daubed boilersuits diligently coat a mountain summit with whitewash in an experimental bid to recuperate the country's melting glaciers. It's a bizarre sight at 4,756 metres (15,600 feet) above sea level. The man behind the idea is not a glaciologist but an inventor, Eduardo Gold. His non-governmental organisation Glaciares de Peru was one of 26 winners of the World Bank's "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition in November 2009. Gold has already begun work while he waits for the 200,000-dollar prize money to fund his...

AMSTERDAM – A Dutch newspaper that interviewed Joran van der Sloot in his prison cell in Lima, Peru, said Monday he has retracted his confession to the killing of a young woman there. De Telegraaf said the 22-year-old Dutchman claims he only signed papers admitting killing Stephany Flores because he was intimidated by police and had been promised he would be transferred to the Netherlands if he confessed. "I was very scared and confused during the interrogations and wanted to get away," the paper quoted him as saying. "In my blind panic, I signed everything, but didn't even know what...

LIMA, Peru - The mother of Joran van der Sloot, the Dutchman accused of murdering a 21-year-old Lima student and long suspected in the disappearance of an American teenager in Aruba, says her son needs mental help but is not the monster people make him out to be. "Joran is sick in his head, but he wanted no help," Anita van der Slot said, breaking her silence on the case in an interview published Saturday in the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf (The Telegraph).

Lawyer Who's Been in One Describes Danger to the Max for Inmates, Corruption, and Extremely Unsanitary ConditionsPeruvian police hustled Joran van der Sloot through a gauntlet of photographers and angry bystanders Friday into a prison system observers call on of the world's worst. The 22-year-old Dutchman is charged with murdering Peruvian business student Stephany Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room May 30. He's also the chief suspect in the 2005 disappearance in Aruba of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway - but he's never been charged. Van der Sloot was taken to the Miguel Castro Castro prison on the outskirts of...

Lima, Peru (CNN) -- Joran van der Sloot's Peruvian attorney has resigned from defending the murder suspect, the attorney told Peru's Foreign Press Association on Monday. Earlier, Maximo Altez Navarro told CNN that he didn't want to be van der Sloot's attorney anymore. "This has created many problems for me," Altez said. According to Peruvian prison authorities, Altez was the only person to have visited van der Sloot in prison. The 22-year-old Dutch citizen is accused in the death of 21-year-old student Stephany Flores Ramirez last month. On Monday, van der Sloot, who is in the Miguel Castro Castro prison...

The Dutchman will not eat and sleep on the floor. Colombian hitman Trujillo Ospina, presumed assassin of Myriam Fefer, tries to visit him in his cell, which measures three meters by two-and-a-half meters. (He) was transfered Friday to the maximum security prison Miguel Castro Castro, after confessing to murdering the young Peruian Stephany Flores. The cameras of the program "Weekly Report" record the entry of the European into the prison. Flanked by various agents and accompanied by the chief of the Institute of National Prisons, Rubén Rodríguez Rabanal, Van der Sloot was taken to a personal (single occupant) cell. He...

Here is raw video of confessed killer Joran van der Sloot being moved in Peru from one location to a jail. As van der Sloot emerged from the police building, the waiting crowd erupted and a chaotic scene followed. Police manhandled van der Sloot into a waiting van before the crowd could get a hold of him. The video shows one man banging on the side of the van after van der Sloot had been ushered inside. He has confessed to killing a Peruvian woman, and has reportedly said he will tell where the remains of American Natalee Holloway are...

U.S. media report a Dutch murder suspect in Peru has told police he is ready to lead authorities to the body of a missing American woman. Peruvian officials said late Thursday that 22-year-old Joran van der Sloot has agreed to tell authorities in Aruba where to find the remains of Natalie Holloway...The chief of Peru's criminal police told the Associated Press he does not know whether to take van der Sloot's offer seriously because he has made dubious claims about the Holloway case in the past.... Police moved the Dutchman to a cell at the prosecutor's office Thursday, dressing him...

Note: The following text is a quote: Joint Statement by United States Attorney Joyce White Vance and FBI Special Agent in Charge Patrick Maley Regarding the Joran van der Sloot Investigation In April of this year, the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office in Birmingham, Alabama initiated an investigation into allegations of criminal conduct by Joran van der Sloot related to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba five years earlier. Prior to law enforcement's involvement in the situation, Van der Sloot offered to provide information to an individual regarding the location of Natalee Holloway's remains and the circumstances of her...

It was just announced that two women are missing from a casino in Columbia where Joran Van der Sloot was before going to Peru. Authoities from Columbia are travelling to Peru to talk to the serial killer. This according to reports from Aruban press people as related to Tim Miller who was at the newspaper when he found out.

Federal agents trying to build an extortion case against Joran van der Sloot secretly gave him the cash that wound up funding his trip to Peru, where he killed a young woman exactly five years after the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, The Post has learned. Van der Sloot tried to shake down Holloway's mother by offering information about her daughter's 2005 disappearance, and agents decided to set him up with a $25,000 payoff, a source told The Post yesterday. An intermediary acting under the direction of the FBI gave van der Sloot the dough in Aruba on May 10 --...

Just watched an interview with international attorney Michael Griffith describing the Peruvian prison system. Definitely not pretty... Seems to me, Joran, that [this] might be a good metaphor for the situation in which you’ll soon find yourself... Except that there will be no John Willliams score, no dramatic rescues, no heroes, and you’ll be all alone.

Maybe it was something she didn't say. Peruvian President Alan Garcia Perez walked out on Secretary Hillary Clinton on Monday during a joint news conference in Lima, Peru, creating an awkward moment for the secretary of state. Garcia made a statement in Spanish, praising Clinton for being "a woman who represents modernity, a woman who has fought a virtuous struggle for women's rights for a very long time." He then walked out of the room, leaving Clinton alone to wait for the translation of his comments and to make her own remarks to reporters. "Well, first let me thank the...

“Two houses both alike in dignity…” As time, lies, and his father’s influence slithered by, it became painfully obvious that Joran was guilty as hell (just think O.J. Simpson or Teddy Kennedy). Many believe that the only thing that kept Joran out of jail was his daddy’s influence... Once again young Van der Sloot murders a young woman. But this time, the role of Important Father has swung 180º. Papa Van der Sloot is dead, and the father of the murdered victim (Stephany Flores Ramirez) is none other than Ricardo Flores, a retired race car driver, powerful businessman, and twice...

utchman Joran van der Sloot, long the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of a U.S. teen in Aruba, has confessed to killing a young Peruvian woman in his Lima hotel room last week, a police spokesman said. Peru's chief police spokesman, Col. Abel Gamarra, told The Associated Press that Van der Sloot admitted under police questioning Monday that he killed 21-year-old Stephany Flores on May 30. According to La Republica newspaper, Van der Sloot told officials he broke Flores' neck in a rage after he discovered she had used his notebook computer without permission and learned he was involved...

Lima, Peru (CNN) -- Joran van der Sloot could be formally charged as early as Tuesday in the killing of Stephany Flores Ramirez, Peruvian government authorities said. The government authorities said Van der Sloot confessed to murder late Monday. He will likely be held at one of three maximum security prisons -- Castro Castro, Piedras Gordas and Lurigancho, authorities said. Efforts by CNN to contact van der Sloot's attorney were not immediately successful. At his first court appearance, the judge may set a hearing date for van der Sloot and could order additional investigations in the case. The Peruvian justice...

Here is a video report that includes video of Joran Van Der Sloot being questioned by officials in Peru in the death of a young woman found dead in his hotel room five years to the day after Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba. Van Der Sloot is seen being paraded before reporters by Peruvian police, getting a physical exam, and being questioned by authorities. Police believe there is no doubt he committed the murder. The report also shows surveillance video of Van Der Sloot and the young woman entering the hotel room together, and of Van Der Sloot leaving...

"Severe" may be an understatement. The prisons in Peru are known to be among the most brutal in the world. Here is one account of what happens to prisoners such as child molesters: A neighbor of Cieneguilla suffered the worst shock which could have happened. His daughter, only two years old, was raped by a drug addict and drunk who during a party at the neighbor's house went to her room and raped her. The unfortunate was saved from being lynched by the locals, but it was reported and he went to Lurigancho. The case, incredibly, didn't appeared in the...

Van der Sloot victim video. This photo is from the hotel's camera and shows Joran van der Sloot exiting the room with Stephany Flores left inside. The video reveals both the suspect and Stephany Flores entering the room which became the murder scene. "He speaks Spanish fluently and we took a statement from him in Spanish, where he denies any involvement and the charges brought against him," Chilean Investigative Police Officer Fernando Ovalle Gatica said in a statement. "Naturally, he needs to face the murder that took place here and if the courts find him responsible for that murder, he...